Death of a PTA Goddess (7 page)

I looked up at him and said, “Yes?”

“How were the ski conditions last night?”

I’d already told him about getting shoved by another skier and the litany of woes from poor Kelly, so this was a feeble conversation starter if there ever was one. “Okay, I guess. For eastern skiing.”

“At least you all made it home from skiing in one piece,” he said.

Technically, counting the kids and me, that meant three separate pieces, but I held my tongue.

He glanced around as if searching for something else to talk about. “What’s that?” he asked, indicating a fax in the receiving bin.

“I don’t know. I hadn’t noticed it,” I answered honestly, snatching it out of the tray. It was addressed to me and looked as though the original had been printed in crayon. It read:

Molly—

If you know what’s good for you, you’ll mind your own business. Unless you want to risk winding up like Perfect Patty.

My heart sank. Why would someone send this? Why risk its being traced? Could I be closer to finding out something than I thought I was?

My typical fight-or-joke reflexes kicked into gear. “The sender didn’t sign the letter. How rude.”

“Dammit, Molly! You got another threatening fax. Here we go again!”

“Not necessarily. This might sincerely be a friendly warning by someone I know who’s worried about me.”

Jim looked again at the fax, his brow furrowed. “Sent anonymously. Mentioning a murder victim. I’m calling the police.” Jim snatched the phone for my fax machine off its cradle and asked, “What’s Tommy’s number?”

“I don’t have it memorized. Oddly.”

Jim cursed under his breath as he rummaged through my messy desk for the phone book to look up the police station’s nonemergency number.

Meanwhile, I looked at the sender’s number in the margin. Thinking out loud, I said, “That number seems familiar.” I dialed it, using our other phone line.

“You have reached Carlton Central School,” said a canned voice. “If you know the extension of the party you wish—”

I hung up. “Huh. It was sent through one of the faxes at the school. From one of the five buildings on the campus. And the dozen or so main and private offices.” I looked at the time stamp. “At a little after ten a.m. During regular class hours.” I waved the paper at my husband. “Now there’s a great lead, hey?”

He didn’t even acknowledge me, but punched in numbers on the phone. “Yes, Sergeant Newton, please.” He paused. “Jim Masters.”

Tommy arrived within half an hour and collected the fax as possible evidence. By then, I’d dropped all pretense of not being upset by it. Tommy was in a bad mood—surly and uncommunicative—unwilling to discuss the status of the investigation or to speculate about who might have sent me the fax.

Just after dinner, Lauren came over, and I could tell by her no-nonsense mannerisms that he’d told her about the fax. Nathan was at a sleepover, and Karen was in her room—ostensibly doing homework, but she had a phone, so that was a bit dicey these days—and Jim was entrenched in his work on his computer, which I’m sure he found easier and more pleasant than dealing with me. We’d butted heads on my tendency to get involved in murder investigations in the past, and we mostly dealt with this particular source of contention by not discussing it.

“Today is the second Thursday of the month,” Lauren said as we made our way into the kitchen.

I glanced at the calendar on my wall. “So it is. That means something significant?”

“Yes.” She thrust a flyer into my hands, and we both sat down on the stools at my kitchen counter. “We’ve been talking about doing this off and on ever since they started offering these self-defense classes. We’re going. Class starts in less than half an hour.”

“This is offered by the police department?” I asked, scanning the brochure.

“Tommy normally teaches it himself, but I doubt he’ll be able to run this one, now that he’s in charge of Patty’s murder investigation.”

“Speaking of his investigation, is there any progress? Forensic evidence? Solid clues from trace evidence? Matches on AFIS?”

“Not that I’ve heard . . . and let’s face it. I usually know when he’s got a lead. As far as the trace evidence goes, there was just nothing substantive either way— elimination of suspects or verification. At Patty’s meeting there were . . . what? . . . eight people at the scene immediately before the crime.”

“What about the weapon?”

“The knife was a total washout. The killer apparently went into Patty’s kitchen, got a thick dish towel, then grabbed the knife out of one of those butcher-block–style holders on the counter. So his or her fingers weren’t in contact with the handle at all.”

“No telltale prints on the counter near the knife holder? Or wherever she kept the towel?”

She shook her head. “Hanging on a magnet hook on the fridge.”

“What about the VCR tape? Any . . . random fingerprints that couldn’t be accounted for?”

She shook her head. “Tommy says the tape was handled by way too many people prior to the meeting. He lifted a couple of clean prints, but he said they were easily explained.”

“Which means they were probably Mr. Alberti’s or Stephanie’s. Or even Chad Martinez’s.”

Lauren tilted her head, a gesture that was her own personal shrug. “It looks as if, even though it was a heat-of-the-moment crime, the killer managed to be thinking clearly enough to not leave an obvious calling card.” Lauren let out a sigh. “The two of us are getting like Tommy . . . taking the emotion out of a heartbreaking task.”

“Kind of makes you long for the days when we used to discuss disposable diapers and baby food.”

“We never discussed that.”

“Didn’t we?”

“No. And it’s too late now.”

“Thank God.”

She rose. “Let’s go. After all, we deserve a nice relaxing night out, right?”

“Right.” I stood up as well, but slowly, straining my sore, stiff muscles. “And what could be more relaxing than a self-defense class, where we can beat up on some policemen?”

Chapter 7

Rah, Rah, Ree. Kick Him in the Groin.

Lauren and I arrived at the class, which was in the gymnasium of one of the elementary schools on the Carlton campus, about ten minutes early. Moving gingerly, with my aching muscles from my fall getting the best of me, I had serious doubts as to how well I would hold up for a two-hour class.

There were already thirty or so students present—all women. “Do you think men think it’s uncool for them to take self-defense lessons?” I asked Lauren as we surveyed the room.

“I’m sure they’d be here if this were a boxing or hand-to-hand combat class.”

“Look.” I lifted my chin. “There’s Emily and Susan.” For some reason I felt a little tense at the sight of Susan. Perhaps it was just the strangeness of having a child of mine romantically involved with someone else’s child, but this was likely to be a recurring theme in my life, so I’d best adapt.

Lauren must have missed the fact that both women were suspects, for she simply said, “And there’s Rachel’s tennis coach. I think I’ll go say hello.”

Emily and Susan were standing together, pouring themselves hot water for tea from an aluminum urn. Emily appeared to be talking earnestly about something, gesturing with her pudgy arms as she spoke. Susan was so tall and lean—emphasized by that dramatic blunt cut of her black hair—that they made an odd-looking duo. I walked over to them.

They halted their conversation the moment I neared. “Emily. Susan. Hi.”

“Hello, Molly,” Emily said with her typical, engaging smile. A hint of color raised on her apple cheeks, which made me suspect that they’d been talking about me just now. Maybe that was just paranoia on my part, but it was hard to forget how harshly Emily had spoken about Patty when she’d thought she was having a private chat with Jane.

I glanced at the box of tea bags on the table. “Doesn’t seem like they should be serving Sleepytime tea, does it? Do they really want us to fall asleep while learning self-defense? Something more along the lines of Jabbing Java, or Ragin’ Raspberry would be more in keeping with the spirit of things.”

“I sure would have preferred something stronger myself,” Susan said, taking a sip of tea. Once again her hands were trembling. Could she be suffering from a permanent case of the shakes from alcoholism, I wondered, recalling Patty’s remark about Susan’s having given up drinking. She gave me a mischievous smile and winked over the brim of her white Styrofoam cup. “I’ve got to tell you, Molly, Adam is certainly smitten with Karen.”

“Oh?”

“Mm-hmm. They’ve made another date for tomorrow night.”

“They have?” This made two weekend dates in a row now. “I feel a bit like a mushroom these days . . . left in the dark.”

She gave me a beatific smile. “Well, from everything I’ve heard, it sounds as though, mushroom or not, you’ve done a wonderful job raising your daughter.”

“Thanks,” I said. She was either just being nice, or she’d heard a lot more about my Karen than I had about her Adam.

There was a pause. Emily said quietly, “We heard that you’re the one who found Patty the other night. Was it really . . . ?” She hesitated, as if deciding that her question was inappropriate. “Never mind. It had to have just been so horrible for you. I can’t even imagine.”

“No. You don’t want to imagine.” A shiver ran up my spine. “I just wish I could forget.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge that up. I just wanted to tell you how very sorry I am that you went through that.”

“Thanks.”

“How is Kelly Birch doing?” Susan asked. “The story about her panic attack on the ski lift has been making the rounds at school.”

I nodded. “It was awful to have to witness. Come to think of it, I should have called her today to find out how she was doing.”

“I did, and she seems to be doing a bit better now,” Emily said. “Even though I wasn’t there, I’d heard what happened to her on the ski lift.”

“Neither was I,” Susan snapped.

Odd that she was being so defensive. Did she want to make a special point of her absence, for some reason? I had a mental flashback to the sight of the skier crashing into me and wondered if I could place Susan into that role. The lighting had been so bad and my peripheral view of the skier had been so brief that the skier could even have been Emily—an opposite body type. Besides, I reminded myself once again, odds were that the whole thing was a coincidence—a reckless skier who happened to crash into me.

“That poor, poor girl,” Emily said with a sigh. “Every time I think of her growing up without her mother, it’s all I can do not to burst into tears. And that final night of Patty’s life! All of that Sturm and Drang over that silly tape. In retrospect, who cares? By now we’d have forgotten all about it and gone about our business.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Susan said. “We all reacted as if the trivial nonsense on that ridiculous tape was black-market pornography. We put Patty on the defensive, even though she was only indirectly responsible for that tape getting made. In any case, certainly she wasn’t guilty of intentionally hurting anyone.”

“No, she would never intentionally hurt anyone,” Emily said, sounding on the verge of tears. “
She
never had a bad word to say about anyone.”

Susan appeared to me to consciously bite her lip at Emily’s statement.

Emily crossed her arms just below her ample bosom. “I’d have given anything to have gotten the chance to apologize to Patty. I called, instead, not five minutes after I got home. There was no answer, so I decided to wait until morning. She was probably already . . .” Emily took a deep breath to collect herself. “Patty was a really close friend, ever since she moved here. I was probably her closest friend in town, even, and I mistreated her so badly. Her best friend, and I didn’t stand up for her one iota. It was all just so humiliating when those kids caught me putting her down like that. I mean, I’ve never done that before. I loved her like a sister. That was the one and only time I ever bad-mouthed her.”

She seemed to be warming her way into one of her long speeches, but then she looked at Susan as if for reassurance. Susan nodded and said, “Everyone realized that you were just caught on film at a bad moment. We
all
were.”

Lauren had stepped up behind me to join us, and Emily dabbed at her eyes. “I didn’t really mean what I said on that tape, you know, Molly. I was just letting off a little steam. I’d had a bad day, and Patty just happened to be in the way.”

“I was equally bad,” Susan said, “and I’m sure Patty understood that we all say things in anger that we don’t really mean. I knew Patty for much longer than you, Emily, and I assure you, Patty understood and forgave you.”

“I didn’t realize that you and Patty went way back,” I said.

“Our husbands used to work together in Michigan,” Susan explained. “In fact, my husband is the one who transferred Randy Birch out here.”

Lauren said, “You know, Emily, I saw the tape, too— Tommy showed it to me—and since I’m not on it myself, I can be objective. It truly was not cause for anyone to get that upset about.”

“Yet somebody must have been,” I muttered.

Emily blanched, and her eyes flew open wide as she stared at me. “You don’t think it was . . . one of us at the meeting, do you? Who killed Patty, I mean?” She glanced nervously at all of us. “Some madman could have coincidentally broken into the house that night. Maybe during the meeting, even, and was waiting for our meeting to break up so that . . .” Emily let her voice fade. “I’m creeping myself out.”

I kept silent, but wished that I believed that the killer was an unknown assailant. Ironic to find comfort in the thought that there was a homicidal maniac roaming the streets of Carlton who breaks into women’s houses and stabs them to death. Still, that was better than thinking one of my fellow PTA board members was a murderer. The bottom line, however, was that a killer acting at random wouldn’t have sent me a threatening fax.

A baby-faced, uniformed officer entered the room, walking swiftly and sporting a big smile. “Sorry I’m late, ladies,” he said. He did a double take and gave me a slight nod, letting me know that he recognized me. I remembered meeting him a few times before, but couldn’t recall his name. “Some of you were expecting my boss, Sergeant Newton, to instruct this class, but the demands on his time got to be too great.”

“Which is why so many of us are here,” Susan said.

The officer looked at her and promptly lost his smile. “Right. Self-defense is a serious matter. My name’s Bob, and although this is just an introductory lesson, I can teach you the basics of how to protect yourself.” He spotted Lauren then, and the color rose in his cheeks. It must have been a bit unsettling to realize that the wife of the boss who normally taught this class was a student. He cleared his throat. “First, I’m going to put you in pairs and have you take turns as attacker and attackee.”

We paired up as instructed. Bob teamed me with Susan, and Lauren with Emily. This was good, because I couldn’t see myself pretending to try to injure my best friend. On the other hand, Karen would be furious with me if I accidentally injured the mother of her new boyfriend. Karen’s boyfriend. Yikes! I would never get used to that thought!

“We’re going to start with facial attacks,” Bob said. “The face is an especially sensitive, vulnerable part of the anatomy. Effective counterstrikes are a thrust to the chin.” Bob thrust the heel of his hand into the air as if at an unseen chin. “Or a chop to the Adam’s apple.” He demonstrated a partially closed hand chop to an invisible neck. “Also, a thumb or thumbs to the eyes. And a real showstopper, clawing the assailant’s nostrils.” These he let speak for themselves with no visual aids.

“Darn it all!” I said. “I knew I shouldn’t have invested in that manicure right before class!”

Everyone laughed, but I had an unpleasant sense of déjà vu and glanced around for any teenagers carrying large purses where a video camera could be hidden. It occurred to me that, with my gargantuan nostrils, I was going to have one heck of a time if Susan decided to practice this one on me.

Officer Bob said, “The eyes and nose are extremely sensitive and can cause intense pain when struck. You jab your fingernail into the flesh in some creep’s nostril and, believe me, you get his full attention. His focus instantly shifts away from attacking you, and toward protecting himself.”

We worked on our facial attacks in slow motion. Both Susan and I were squeamish and cautious with the thumbs to the eyes. The “nostril rake,” even in slow motion,
especially
in slow motion, was out of the question. After we’d switched roles a couple of times, Bob asked, “Questions?”

I raised my hand.

“Molly?”

“I can’t imagine myself being able to gouge out someone’s eye. I mean . . . yikes! Can’t I just buy some pepper spray or something?”

“Sure,” the young officer said. “But what if you can’t get to your pepper spray? What if it’s in the car and you and your assailant are two blocks away, on the sidewalk?”

Why in God’s name would I be stupid enough to be two blocks away from the safety of my car? But that wasn’t his point, and I conceded that it was a good one. “Then . . . I’m screwed.”

“
Then
you poke him in the eyes.”

I nodded, thinking that, in theory, at least, I might be able to manage this, as long as I was merely reacting to the threat and had no time to think about what I was actually doing.

“The first thing we’re going to assume is that your attacker is stronger than you are. That means you have to attack his weakest areas. The places where it hurts the most.” He called into the hallway, “We’re ready for you.”

A man waddled through the door. At least, I assumed the waddler was a man, but in the protective fencing mask and padding underneath the sweat suit, it was impossible to tell. Talk about a stuffed shirt, I thought, but kept silent, thinking that would be embarrassing to say out loud, even without a camera recording the moment.

“Now, ladies, I’d like you to meet Mr. Would-Be Attacker. This is the role I normally play in Sergeant Newton’s class, by the way, so I’m happy to shed the costume for tonight.” He gave a little smile and nod to Lauren as he said this.

As he continued with his instructions, my thoughts again drifted to my concerns about being in a self-defense class while bruised and with aching muscles. I tuned in again as Bob was saying, “You do whatever it takes to get free, then you run. Say the assailant grabs you from behind. You stomp back on his instep. Turn and knee him in the groin. Sharp upward thrust into his chin.” He demonstrated this in slow motion with the poor guy in the sweat suit. “If you’re not already free of him, you go for the face, especially the eyes. Easiest and best way is to claw the face as hard as possible. Start at the forehead, and rake your fingers downward toward the chin. The assailant will involuntarily close his eyes, and probably even cover his eyes. You immobilize him now with a knee to the groin or a blow to the throat, with a sharp, strong punch to the base of the neck.”

Even in slow motion, this looked grisly.

“In summary, you strike with your strongest areas to his weakest . . . heel of hand to the chin, fist to the trachea, stomp-kick to the instep, knee to the groin, thumb to the eyeball.” He released our Stuffed Sweat Suit, and turned to face us with a smile. “Who wants to be our first volunteer?”

Nobody raised their hands. I’d become queasy. Had he asked, “Who wants to be our first vomiter?” I might have raised my hand.

“Molly? How about you?”

I shook my head. “I’m feeling a little sick to my stomach.”

“Let’s work through that.”

Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one who was nauseated. “Is vomiting on your assailant an effective deterrent?”

“Possibly, but I wouldn’t want you to stake your life on it.” He gestured at me. “Step forward on the mat and start walking toward the door.”

I did as instructed, and after a brief, unpleasant verbal confrontation with Stuffed Man, I had the much
more
unpleasant sensation of being crushed against his chest, his arm around my throat.